February 2010 Archives

Writing in response to a post on the Flight Blog about the influence of birds in the early science of flight, Americas Editor John Croft discovered a bird in his back garden that had no tail yet was still able to fly. He said in his blog As the Cro(ft) Flies: "Birds sometimes get their tail feather stuck in the ice, which pulls out the features when the bird takes off. The feathers eventually grow back."

NASA Edge released a video of STS-130 Flight Day 8. Watch as the final module for the space station relocates the window to another position on Hyperbola.

Marvelling at modern technology, Runway Girl writes a post about T-Mobile USA launching the HTC HD2 smartphone soon which will be preloaded with lots of goodies, including six months of free access to Aircell's Gogo in-flight Internet. She says this is "another clever way to get people to experience Gogo."

FlyPHANUK posted a great image of Air New Zealand aircraft onto images on AirSpace.

And why not have a browse around the Flightglobal Shop and pre-order your copy of the JP Biz Jet directory out 1st March.

Take a look at the videos from last month's Low Cost Airlines World Asia Pacific Conference where we produced videos of interviews with CEOs including Virgin Blue's Brett Godfrey who is taking a "cautiously buoyant" attitude this year, and Azran-Osman Rani of Air Asia X who is: "Breaking all the rules as we always do."

See our page dedicated to last week's first flight of the Boeing 747-8F. We covered the event using Twitter, video images, and compiled content to give you "the story so far". See AirSpace user Andrew Siebert's jet City Report blog post on the event. There are some great images as the new freighter lifts off the ground.

See a forum post about easyJet selling Starbucks coffee to passengers. A cup of Starbucks coffee will cost €3, compared to €2.5 for other coffee brands served on the company's flights.

Runway Girl Mary Kirby writes a post about economy seating in the Boeing 787. Recaro Comfort Line's "ultra slim seating", which Mary says is already installed in Qantas Airways' Airbus A380 economy-class cabins "is attracting a lot of interest from airlines", and suggests Boeing is considering a version of the same seating may be used. "Hey, it's got hammocks for your feet! Why the hell not?" she says.  

Groups around the world are helping earthquake-stricken Haiti, and aviation is no exception. On the commercial front, LAN Cargo flew a 767-300 with 48 tons of relief cargo and is sharing its warehouse with a non-profit organisation gathering more supplies.

In the private sector, Mission Aviation Fellowship recently sent its Quest Kodiak to deliver aid, and John Travolta flew his 707 with supplies--with Scientology ministers in tow, irking some of our readers.

Meanwhile, half way around the world, the Flightglobal team premiered the interactive show daily newspaper at the Singapore Air Show. Check out the new look digital magazine which has videos of aerial displays, interviews with the manufacturers and the daily wrap up by our man in Singapore Siva Govindasamy and Jon Ostrower, aka FlightBlogger.

From our archive, this week in 1966 we showed the first Soviet photo of the lunar surface and in 1969 humans started roaming the celestial body, taking their last steps in 1972. Now that America is poised to abandon its plan to return to the moon, the moon may again remain as far from us as it did in that Soviet photo.

Last week the Flightglobal Webbies 2009 winners were announced. Check out the Flight blog to see where you ranked.  

Hot off the (virtual) press today is our first ever Interactive Flight Daily News magazine.

This is a digital-only magazine produced by the Flightglobal team out at this week's Singapore Air Show.

A couple Q&A bits for you:

What's Flight Daily News?

Flight Daily News is a daily magazine produced live at major air shows and industry events throughout the year. It's handed out free to show visitors as they arrive at the event and the idea is to be as up to date with current happenings as possible.

To that aim we sometimes produce Flight Evening News - tagline "today's news today" - which is handed out to show visitors as they leave at the end of the day.

What's a digital magazine?

In its basic form a digital magazine can be just an online pdf version of a physical paper mag. However the digital environment does open up the possibilities of enriching the reader's experience through interactive elements on page.

For example, videos, moving graphics, active hyperlinks, all singing all dancing adverts, that kind of stuff ...

What's in today's copy of iFDN?

Now this is the cool part. Our Interactive Flight Daily News is a purpose-built digital publication - not just a flat online pdf.

We've put the interactive potential at the heart of this new format and as such got tonnes of videos and images to accompany Day 1's top stories.

These include:

• A330F - Airbus give us a first look inside the new freighter
• 787 update - Boeing's Randy Tinseth gives an encouraging message following early progress from the 787 flight test programme
• Highlights of the displays - including the A-10 "warthog" and the flaming F-111
• But there's loads more - 24 pages worth to be exact.

How does it differ from the show coverage on Flightglobal's Singapore page?

Well, the important thing to remember is that they're doing difference things but with the same content - in the same way that websites and magazines do different things.

Flightglobal's Singapore webpage is a terrific hub for everything that's occurring at the show and all the content, stories and multimedia produced by our team out there.

iFDN is topical and provides a snap shot of Day 1 at the show, and from that you can get a feeling for the tone and atmosphere of the business environment. It also offers a richer experience for the reader in a way that the website cannot.

www.flightglobal.com/singapore webpage

A double page spread from iFDN 

The design interface on Flightglobal must by its very purpose accommodate other types of content and usage. The design of iFDN is much more impactful as it can truly focus on doing the one job it has been created for.

And let's not forget it's free! A quality magazine full of stories and videos that professional journalists and designers have worked through the night to deliver ... for FREE!

You lucky people!